


Permanent Birthday Party

by lielking



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Akechi Goro Has A Palace, Akechi Goro Lives, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, akechi is a horrible person, atlus can suck my dick lots of the thieves are gonna be gay, because we learned a lot about akechi in it, i have an outline but am bad at predicting where writing goes, more warning tags will be added as i work on this, non royal compliant, sadly maruki and kasumi will not be included, so tags will be added, though i will be using backstory from royal, violence and death may happen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:07:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23628175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lielking/pseuds/lielking
Summary: Goro Akechi died two years ago. He was shot in the head by a mirror image of himself, and he died.He didn’t believe in the afterlife until he woke up in it.•••Akira wakes up in the velvet room and leaves it with a mission. Goro is stuck in his personal hell, being confronted at every turn by who he can’t stand the most; he’s trapped in his own palace with no way out.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira
Comments: 7
Kudos: 47





	1. Chapter 1

“Welcome!” the kid said, standing in front of a mansion. His eyes were closed and his smile was wide, his hands clasped in front of him. He was done up in his best clothes; his little blue suit jacket was pristine, as was his matching tie, and the scrapes on his knees were covered up with pretty blue band-aids. His little brown shorts were stiff, having been ironed that morning, and his new dress shoes were shiny for the occasion. He got to pick out his own special plaid blue socks to wear for the party, since it was his birthday. 

The guests began filtering in around him, chattering and laughing and carrying bright, sparkly boxes. Many stopped to shake his hand and ruffle his hair, which he fixed up nice again every time it got mussed. When the crowd was all inside, he turned to follow, but stopped halfway up the steps. 

The tinkling music from inside seemed muted. The wind picked up enough to ruffle his hair, and he could hear streamers rustling and balloons squeaking in the breeze. He turned around with slow, shaking steps, but kept his smile plastered on. No guests were supposed to be late, but if the person behind him happened to be a late guest, the kid had to be polite. 

“Hello?” he said, as he finished turning. “Are you here for the party?”

“Party…?” the stranger asked. His voice sounded very strained. “No… no, I don’t think so.”

“That’s a real strange outfit you have on, mister,” the kid said, beginning to back up the steps. 

The stranger seemed to look down at himself from under his huge, cracked mask, and he laughed. It was a very wheezy laugh. “I suppose it is,” he said. 

The kid backed up further. The stranger was scary. And tall. And very, very dark. 

The stranger took a few slow steps forward and stopped, curling in on himself and clutching at his stomach. The eye that was visible through his mask was narrow and red. “Is it your party?” he asked. 

The kid nodded. 

“That’s nice.” The stranger collapsed on his knees. Something red was leaking onto the ground around him. 

“You’re making a mess,” the kid said, furrowing his face. “That’s not nice.”

“It really isn’t,” the stranger said. He looked up, grunting as he moved. “What’s your name, kid?”

The kid resisted the urge to fuss with his tie. He squirmed on his feet, still backing up. When he could reach behind him, he gripped for the door handle and paused. He stared at the stranger, who was still on the ground, unmoving. 

“My name is Goro,” the kid said, turning to open the door. “And I don’t think you were invited.” 


	2. kurusu and his posse of idiots

Akira wakes up easily. His eyes open without the resistance they would in the real world, and his body forgoes the usual remnants of sleep to fly into an upright position. He’s alert immediately, fully awake, and his surroundings are dim.

He looks himself over, half expecting a prisoner’s uniform, and finds himself in his phantom thief garb. Out of habit, he adjusts his cuffs. 

It’s been a while. 

He stands with caution, muscles tense as he looks around. He struggles to find any clues as to his whereabouts in the low light. A high, lilting voice rings in his ears, echoing around the space he’s in. He can hear faint orchestral music from somewhere far away. It’s familiar in an awful, unnerving way. 

Akira crouches on instinct, legs tensed, and feels around himself and finds that he’s in an aisle, in between rows of chairs like in a movie theatre. In the distance below him, he can see the source of the light in the room. It’s too far away to make out clearly. He takes a few measured steps forward, feeling for purchase along the chairs on either side of him. The aisle he’s in leads down and towards the light on a slant. 

He begins picking his way forward, his steps silent and prepared for splashing on instinct. The ground below him has purchase, though, and stays solid beneath him. The closer he gets to the light, the louder his shoes seem to click against the floor. 

Well past 100 rows later, he gets close enough to the light to see his surroundings in full, which have been etching themselves out of the darkness with each step forward. 

He’s in some kind of theater, moving towards a stage illuminated by a bright blue spotlight. The rows of seats stretch up endlessly behind him, all folded and empty and blue velvet. The stage itself is obscured by blue curtains; the spotlight is shining a flat circle on the curtains’ surface. 

Akira stops walking just yards away from the stage. The space between the stage and chairs is empty, like a horizontal aisle separating the two parts of the theatre. With restrained breathing and trepidation, Akira steps into the space between the stage and the audience. 

A hollowness fills him. The air feels thicker and the orchestral music is harder to hear. His entire body feels numb and tingly- like his foot fell asleep and infected the rest of him. 

He frowns and looks to either side of him, seeing only darkness stretching out in either direction. He steps closer to the stage and the numbness gets worse. With only scraps of his patience remaining, Akira runs up to the stage though the rapidly thickening air and vaults over its edge, stepping below where the spotlight shines on the curtain. 

When his last step clicks onto the hard wood of the stage below, the orchestral music echoing through the theatre swells and the spotlight creaks down to target him. His next breath is easy. His limbs regain feeling. Light clapping fills the theatre as the houselights flick on one by one, illuminating each row from front to back. As they get further off, they fade into shadow with the rest of the theater.

Akira stares down at the empty space between the chairs and stage, where an ornate wooden table now sits. Igor is clapping from it, with Lavenza standing like a doll beside him. 

“Welcome back to the velvet room,” Igor says. 

Akira is still put back by his voice. He’d become accustomed to the low timbre of the false god. 

“This is…?” Akira trails off. He gestures to the new opulence of the room. 

Igor chuckles. It’s high and light. It sounds genuine. “Not your velvet room,” he supplies. “Among the lies my imposter told you, there were kernels of truth. The velvet room exists between dream and reality, mind and matter. It takes a unique form for each of its guests.”

Akira nods.

“Your rehabilitation is completed. This is a room for another, equally tormented trickster.” Igor chuckles. “It is rare that I stay in one place for so long.”

Akira frowns. “Why am I here?”

“Ah, yes. Your presence here is an oddity. Ordinarily, this room is only accessible to those bound by a contract. But it seems you have formed a contract with one other than me. You have a promise to keep and have been granted access to this room for the time being. The show is about to begin, if you would take a seat.”

Igor sweeps his hand out to gesture to a seat in the front row. His eyes remain wide and cold. His grin does not move as Akira makes a show of contemplating what to do. 

Real or fake, he’s never trusting that creepy ass nose again. 

When Igor’s stare gets too intense to handle for much longer, Akira gulps. He slips off of the stage and into the numb space, which remains difficult to exist in. He shuffles through it quickly to take a seat. 

He tries not to gasp for fresh air once he’s seated and fails. 

“Wonderful. The show can now start. I only ask that you remain a passive observer, or there may be dire consequences.”

It’s a thinly veiled threat if Akira’s ever heard one. He nods and crosses his arms. His gloves are making his hands sweaty. 

The houslights shut off all at once, thrusting the theater into darkness. All that’s visible is Igor’s desk, illuminated by a spotlight, and the stage with its own. The curtains begin to open with fervent creaking. It takes them minutes to pull back all the way. The stage behind them is dark and looming. Igor snaps, and the stage’s spotlight silently moves to illuminate a very shiny something hanging far above the stage floor. It’s too high to make out, but it seems to be slowly descending now that it’s illuminated. It becomes clear just how large the thing is as it moves continuously down, revealing the bottom to be a huge golden disk upon which bars rise from. It thuds to the stage floor with no grace. 

A huge, golden bird cage. 

Another prison of the velvet room. Akira’s getting awful thoughts about what kind of person’s heart this place is reflecting. Akira’s prison was small and secluded. 

This one is on show for a theater with an endless audience. 

Creaking comes from overhead and more spotlights turn on, swiveling to bore down on the bird cage, where a very visible lump is lying motionless. 

“He will awaken soon,” Igor says, voicing Akira’s confusion. “He cannot avoid sleep forever.”

As if on cue, the lump begins to shift. An arm emerges, propping the body up. Groaning floats off of the stage and echoes through the theatre. 

Slowly, the figure rises, its back still to the audience. Akira’s fingers tap at his arms incessantly. A gilded cage on display for endless people to see. A public prison. 

An equally tortured trickster. 

When the shaggy brown hair becomes visible, Akira has to bite his own palm through his gloves to resist cursing. Igor had threatened him to keep him silent. 

Akechi’s head swivels. He’s in his gaudy prince outfit. Eventually, Akechi turns, wincing at the spotlights, and walks to the front of the cage. One hand comes up to grip a golden bar. As if amplified, his voice floats down from the stage, unrestrained by distance. “You,” he says. “God.”

From his mouth, it doesn’t sound like an exclamation. He’s addressing Igor as if that is his name. 

“How flattering,” Igor lilts. “But no. The one who lured you to this room in the past is no more. He has been vanquished. He was an imposter.”

Akechi’s mouth curls up in a sneer. He isn’t wearing his crow mask. “God. No more. Did Kurusu and his posse of idiots do that? Infiltrating the heart of God for the  _ greater good _ seems like something they’d do.” No affection lingers in his voice at the mention of Akira. Akira frowns.

It occurs to him that, from where he’s sitting, Akechi can’t see him.

“In a way, you could say that that is exactly what they did,” Igor responds. 

Akechi’s laugh is loud and harsh. “Am I fucking mic’d?” he asks, bringing a second hand up to grip the bars. “You shouldn’t be able to hear me from down there. Let me out, now.”

“My distance from you reflects your unwillingness to accept help from others,” Igor says. “It seems you keep those who care for you very far away. I doubt I would be able to touch your cage if I made an attempt.”

Akechi sneers again. “Who are you and what the fuck do you want? Where am I?”

“This is the velvet room.”

“Bullshit,” Akechi snarls. His knuckles turn white across the bars.

“The state of this room reflects the state of your heart. Everything within it is curated by you. I and my assistant are here only to aid you in your upcoming battles.”

Akechi growls. His voice is dark and menacing when he says, “As if I’m not already in hell. Is this my punishment? Two awful afterlives meant to torment me?”

Igor laughs. From beside him, Lavenza asks, “Why do you believe that you are in hell in the waking world, as well?”

Akira blinks. The waking world. Akechi exists outside of this room- alive. He must be sleeping right now to be here. 

“As if you don’t know where I’ve been,” Akechi says. “In that awful, despondent cycle of torture.”

“It is very interesting,” Lavenza says, her tone pointed. “That you would view the two realms of your heart as separate hells.”

“Start making sense,” Akechi says. He drops a hand from the bars to feel at his right hip, where his gun and sword used to hang. 

“It is my understanding that you spend your waking days within your own heart,” Igor says, continuing to be vague. 

“Within my own-“ Akechi’s eyes widen, and his tone shifts from mocking to hollow. He sounds like Shido’s cognitive version of him. “Have I been stuck in my own palace? Have you trapped me in my  _ own palace _ ?”

Igor laughs. “We have much to discuss, it seems. But not in present company. Return to your time of rest, and we will continue this conversation at a later date.”

Akechi kicks at the bars of his cage. “What the fuck are you-“ He cuts himself off as his cage begins ascending, far more quickly than it had previously descended. “Hey! Let me-“

His voice fades away as his cage vanishes from sight. The curtains close, and the houselights flicker on. 

Igor’s head swivels to face Akira. His grin doesn’t falter once as he says, “Let us hope a glimpse inside your contractor’s heart has offered you enough insight to complete your obligation to him. Fulfill your contract, trickster.”

Every light in the theater turns off and Akira wakes up in a cold sweat at home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woo! second chapter up, sorry for the wait. wait time in between chapters should be at least a week since i’m trying to stock up on chapters for future posting.  
> that being said: thank you for reading and i hope you have a nice quarantine


	3. on the nose

Days and nights blend together in this world. The sky is perpetually blue and clouded over; in cycles it dims slightly and faint stars begin to show through the clouds, then it brightens once more in a mockery of a sunrise and the cycle starts again. Goro has many theories as to why. None of them matter. 

Goro’s sleep is not dictated by the perpetual continuance of morning to afternoon to pre-evening. The time cycles seem to flow indiscriminately, and he gets tired during a different state of sun each ‘day’. His schedule for the past eternity has been fairly simple. For a time, he ambles around the courtyards or sneaks his way inside, entertains himself or stares at nothing until he’s tired, goes to sleep wherever he can, and wakes up some time later. He hasn’t dreamed since he arrived. Sleeping energizes him somewhat, though it fails to ever make him feel truly rested. It’s impossible for Goro to estimate how long he sleeps each time he passes out- he assumes he doesn’t sleep for long, considering his near constant state of exhaustion. Every time he manages to fall asleep, he’s awoken at some point later by the sound of laughing or cheering or fireworks.

Maybe he only naps for half an hour each time. 

It doesn’t matter. Regardless of its uselessness, sleeping has provided him his only respite from this hellscape, and he has thus tried to do it as much as he can. 

The monotony and ambiguity of this world has infuriated Goro to no end since he arrived, but he’s been free to do whatever since arriving. He’s had the luxury of choice; terrorizing the vaguely rendered guests or kicking trees for a day. He’s been trapped, yes, but in a very vague sense. The city exists outside of the gates. He can climb out and over and struggle his way down to Shibuya and observe the recorded city with its sharp corners and noted details- all of the things Goro remembers about it, trapped in place. Terrifyingly, as long as he’s spent here, some details of Shibuya have started to smudge. 

He used to put in the effort to escape the manor grounds and climb down to the city on a constant basis, each trip made with the intent to find a way  _ out  _ and never return to the whitewashed building where his likeness greeted him around every corner. Sick self-fascination had him returning to the manor within a few time cycles at most. Goro has been gifted with the opportunity to psychoanalyze himself and pick out things in his subconscious to hate, and the manor offers more fuel than the slowly un-rendering Shibuya.

His first trips to the city were intriguing, at least. He found people loitering around. Incredibly vague, simplistic renderings of people (if he had to theorize, people from his own perspective, boiled down to the things he hated most about them upon meeting; it’s nearly cartoonish how exaggerated they are in mannerisms that annoy him), but people nonetheless. More genuine than the residents of the manor, who either condescend or wait on him, hand and foot. 

His later trips to the city dissuaded him from taking more. He’d been in denial, then, about where he was and why everything here was so on-the-nose or familiar. He noticed the blurring edges of a cafe he went to only once and left the city before the time of day changed.

He’d only gone for instagram, anyway. Ordered sweets he didn’t really care for, ate a bite or two, positioned his fork on the plate and took an overedited selfie. The cafe wasn’t important to him, his memory of it was fading with time, and so the image of it in his recreated Shibuya was becoming more vague. It made sense, in a sick way that continued to shove his own situation in his face.

Seeing the cafe and its blurred edges made him think of Shido. (He did not like thinking of Shido, now. Goro used to do it constantly, in a self-pleasing-smug way that fueled his own ego about his  _ wonderful  _ plan.)

Shido thought, when they’d been drafting up Goro’s idol image, that they needed to blur all of Goro’s hard edges as much as possible. He wasn’t convinced in Goro’s ability to act the part of a ‘detective prince’. Goro had, at the time, felt incredibly self satisfied about that. He was so good an actor that Shido thought he was a  _ bad  _ one. He played the part of a mildly bumbling kid eager to please  _ so _ well that Shido bought into it; he didn’t think Goro could  _ act _ . 

Goro clearly couldn’t, having been outsmarted by seven kids, a cat, and his own father, being none-the-fucking-wiser that he’d never had a chance. And he’d been so fucking  _ smug  _ about it- so  _ convinced  _ that his master plan, with its thirty fucking levels, was fooling  _ everyone.  _

Goro only managed to fool himself into thinking he was smart. Or competent, for that matter. He was clearly an actual bumbling idiot- he got killed by his father’s image of him and went straight to hell, despite his fervent belief last year that God had  _ chosen _ him.

He just couldn’t stop being proven wrong.




_ Making eye contact with Shido was always grating. He thought of his mother’s eyes, which he didn’t have, whenever he saw Shido. Goro looked so much like his mother, apart from the eyes. Those were Shido’s. _

_ Nonetheless, he held eye contact as he spoke. Shido insisted on it; acted like he was training Goro on how to be  _ polite _. Like he was doing charity work for the street rat who’d never had a chance at high society or manners before. “I agree, Shido-san,” he said, smiling. He worked on smiles for hours last year. Stood in front of a mirror and sanded off all of the edges and teeth that scared kids away in the group homes.  _

_ “As if you wouldn’t,” Shido says. “And work on your smile- if you’re going on TV, you’re going to want people to like you.” _




It’s remarkable how unfettered Goro is in what he can do in this world. However boring it is, and however much he’s faced with his own likeness at most turns, he can move. 

Waking up in a cage felt like something he had coming. 

Waking up out of the cage felt like a gift. Specifically, a gift from Shido. Given with conditions and the understanding that one slip-up would leave Goro penniless. 

Goro is accustomed to sleeping in unfamiliar, unsafe places; he’s never been familiar or safe anywhere. As such, he’s accustomed to waking up somewhere different every time he closes his eyes. Today he wakes up with his back to a tree, one leg hanging off of a branch of it. 

He wakes up in the gaudy, obnoxiously bright outfit of his first awakening and early years traipsing in the metaverse. He tends to sleep in it, as the studs and belt buckles all over his newer attire hurts like hell to sleep in. 

As soon as he’s out of the tree, Goro summons Loki and lets his outfit change without resistance. The always mocking, constantly derisive tone of Loki laughs in the back of his mind.  _ Shallow concerns,  _ he thinks.  _ Changing your outfit in hell.  _

He’d tell Loki to shut up if he didn’t think conversing with his own personas was insane.

Kurusu used to do that, while they were working together. (While Goro, ever the idiot, thought he’d somehow managed to trick the most observant person he’d ever met.) He’d usher the phantom thieves into a safe room, lock the door, and retreat to a corner to flip through his personas and  _ check up on them.  _ He’d summon Baal and ask what was up, setting his mask on a shelf, and throw wry smiles at Goro’s incredulous eyebrow raises.

Goro was not Kurusu. He’d never be on friendly terms with the facets of his heart.

“You’re back.”

Speaking of his heart.

Goro doesn’t bother changing into the white outfit. The kid’s already seen him, dramatic emo attire and all. “I never left,” Goro responds, looking about three feet off of the floor to make eye contact with his younger self. “I can’t.”

The kid pouts. “I don’t like you,” he says. “You make the guests uncomfortable. When you dress nicely, you take their attention. It’s  _ my _ party.”

Goro wants to bite back  _ “By that logic, it’s my party too, dumbass” _ , but he refrains. Being mean to the kid has only ever resulted in draining fights with shadows. Instead he says, “I don’t like me, either.”

It almost amuses him. The kid  _ is  _ him. Goro’s always gotten a kick out of insulting people without them realizing. 

Unfortunately, the kid probably gets a kick out of it too. Considering he’s Goro’s shadow. His tone is petulant when he says, “Passive aggression is rude. Being a street rat is no excuse to not have manners. You know better.”

“I’m sure I do,” Goro bites back. God, he can’t stand this brat. He’s always been awful with kids. “I’ve been trained like a good little puppy, huh?”

“Just because you can’t appreciate the help of others doesn’t mean they haven’t tried,” the kid says. His awful eyes are emotionless. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I know. I’m sure I’m not on the guest list, and I’m  _ terribly  _ sorry about the intrusion,” Goro says, smiling his TV smile. “But, as you are  _ well aware _ , I cannot leave.” He lets the passive aggression bleed into outright aggression. He isn’t in the mood for in-his-face, on-the-nose metaphors from the warped projection of his ‘distorted self’. 

Everything about palaces has always pissed him off. Oh, Sae thinks of trials as  _ games,  _ so her palace is a  _ casino _ , where she always wins! How subtle. Goro’s a petulant, childish idiot who’s been dolled up and put on display for his entire life, so his palace is some fucked off party where he’s the guest of honor.

It’s too spot on to have any nuance. Not that he’d expect his heart to give nuance to anything.

“You’re going to die here,” the kid says. “Being in your own heart for so long isn’t safe.”

The most annoying thing about Kidkechi; Goro’s own shadow can’t know anything more than Goro himself does. He voices Goro’s most nagging, annoying thoughts as if he’s saying anything original.

“I’m already dead,” Goro says. “And this is hell.”

“You do deserve to burn,” the kid smiles. “But no.”

Goro doesn’t grace that with a response. He pulls his gun off of his hip and twirls it in his claws. Holds it in his left hand, shoots it at the ground, inches from the kid’s perfectly shined shoes. The kid doesn’t flinch. 

“I wonder what would happen if I shot  _ you _ ,” Goro smiles. “Maybe I’d be put out of my misery.”

The kid shrugs and turns around. He walks back to the manor without a word. Goro almost thinks he got away with threatening the ruler of his own palace before the shadows (formless, suburban pipe-dreams with porcelain masks) swarm him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> been a while. 200 hits. fuckign WOWZA  
> akechi's self hatred is the most relatable part of his character, other than the serial murder

**Author's Note:**

> i sure do suck at consistent uploading so this’ll be a bumpy fuckin ride. first chapter is in past tense but most other chapters will be in present tense. all chapters third person.


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